the name is how our middle daughter used to introduce me to some of her friends (sad but true!)

Tuesday, January 17, 2012

painting again...

One of my retirement resolutions was to get down to doing some painting again. Yes, I’ve done lots of drawings that have included watercolour paints, inks and the like, but the last REAL painting I did was completed some 42 years ago! The main stimulus for wanting to paint again was the memory/influence of one of my former tutors at Oxford School of Architecture – the truly inspirational Tom Porter (who sadly died in 2010, aged 72). He just adored “colour” and encouraged us to use it boldly whenever we undertook our painting projects (which, for me, proved to be important in the first two years of the architecture course). One of my paintings was used for an exhibition poster for the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford. Sadly, I no longer have any of my college paintings (one of them, painted on chipboard, ended up as the roof hatch to the loft space in our Percy Street house, Oxford – and will, no doubt, have made a fortune for one of its subsequent owners!). In homage to Tom, my first painting (entitled: “Deckchairs for Tom 1”) duly makes use of “bold colour” – and is the first time I’ve ever painted on canvas (60x60cm) OR used acrylic paint. My painting technique is incredibly rusty after all these years (it was never wonderful!) and the result is hardly a “work of art” in terms of quality or composition – but I really enjoyed doing it (playing my music and generally making a mess of my basement workspace) and, hopefully, will continue to paint over the coming years. As a demonstration of this commitment to undertaking more paintings, I went out this morning and bought three more canvases (they were on offer!)!Photo: one down… three to go (well, actually, I’ve only got plans for painting no.2 thus far)?

About Me

Married to Moira with three daughters (Ruth, Hannah and Alice) and six grandchildren (Ursula, Jemima, Rosa, Dan, Iris and Mikey). Former architect and also worked with young people in education in recent years... now just a retired slacker.